This is not a meme.

1. Pick an archetype.
2. Pick three canons, preferably ones I know and preferably ones with a sizable cast of characters. Chances are I'll know one in three as long as it's not anime. Or wrestling. If not, I'll ask you for another.
3. I'll write an alphabet for a character in that canon, an explanation for the archetype you picked. See example here.
4. Prompts will be posted sometime within the next two weeks. Or two days, depending on how much time I have.

Title: Sunshine and Shadow
Fandom: Very, very loosely Dresden Files
Characters: Stephen LaMarck (OC)/Max Parker (OC), with Stella LaMarck (OC)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,922
Summary: Two men and a little lady; a scene in the life of a small portion of a family
A/N: Written for the Prop 8 meme and much, much delayed. Stephen is mine, his lover Max is kikibug13's, and much much thanks to her for being so patient with me while I dragged this out kicking and screaming.

There was still warmth to be had outside, despite the lateness of the season. Solace and Claudia had taken advantage of it by taking Sammy and the twins out for a girls' day out; Stephen was taking advantage of it and the rare time off to be with Max out on the balcony with Stella.

Stephen himself was seated and leaned up against the outer wall of the house, watching Max gravely and deliberately teach Stella how to fold paper into pleasings shapes. It was a pleasure to see. The work was repetitive, motions carried over from one paper crane to the next until she was gravely, deliberately making crane after crane to add to the heap that was growing behind her. It reminded him of a story he had heard long ago, from a Knight of the Cross. One thousand paper cranes would turn into real birds and fly up and carry one wish to the heavens. One thousand paper cranes would grant your most hopeful and dire dream.

He wasn't sure he believed it, but given the world in which they lived, anything was possible.

"Would you even want your fondest wish to be granted," Stephen murmured, half to himself, half to Max. "With all the ways things could happen."

( Read more... )

So, I was skimming through Yahoo headlines, and one of them was bout Barak "Our Badass President" Obama calling the $UngodlyAmount Wall Street bonuses or something shameful. And my first thought was, wow, that may go over well with all us poor everyman people who aren't wheeling and dealing the big bucks on Wall Street but I bet that's going to piss off a lot of people he works with. And my second thought was a flashback to the first season of Rome where there was some bit of dialogue about "all this noise the plebs are making" and then "it's music compared to how they sound when they're unhappy"

Followed up immediately with Dear God, Eddie Izzard was right, we're the Romans.

Of course, why I doubted the effervescent wisdom of the great and powerful Eddie I'll never know.

Anyway. ( Deutsch! )

I promise, tonight, I'll get round to that KMFDM icon. I just need to find a cap of Sascha not acting dorky. Evidently I was way too amused with that part of the DVD.

And now, after a brief hiatus to bang on my computer, Russian again!

( Read more... )

I don't believe this! Would everyone please stop getting shot dying of lung cancer?

So, I guess the good news is that after running about five different antivirus programs my computer may end up being malware-free. This strikes me as something like the equivalent of hitting the offending spider with a can of Raid, your boot, the phone book, the Oxford Shakespeare, and then jumping up and down on it just to make sure, but hey. You gotta do what you gotta do, right? The somewhat better news is that if I can keep it going until my birthday (roughly four more months, which is what I was planning on trying to do anyway) my aunt and the Elf Lord will kick in some. A new laptop is $5-600 bucks. I did my budget and I can certainly save up that much by then, so with family kicking in, I should be able to get somewhat that will last. And hopefully then I'll have a backup compy too.

I also got a whole bunch of boxes yesterday! Thank you, folken! *snuggles* Especially to my darling Bria, whose present was timely enough to remind me that I am, in fact, the goddamn jaguar, and the little things should not get me down.

I also found my other pair of shoes, which are really more like sneaker boots/hiking boots for squishy people, and they are in good condition with only some scuffing at the toes. I can live with this. This also means I don't need to shell out for a new pair of sneakers, which, at this point, all to the good.

Firefox still isn't working on the laptop, but that may be in the line of requiring an uninstall/reinstall, which isn't bad. I can get the install file either at work and pop it into an email to myself or here and pop it onto a flash drive. A few of us did a working last night to try and improve our probabilities, and if nothing else I would hope that we, as the TSO storyteller says, did no harm.

I cut my finger slicing potatoes. I never cut my finger slicing vegetables. What the hell.

But, overall... well. Here's hoping today goes better than yesterday. If it's slow at work I can get started on my homework assignment for the week, too. Or at least get a bit of a walk in; it's slowly, very slowly warming up. And this Thursday will begin the sixth week of Courtesan school. Holy crap, people.

So. My computer has a something (Trojan) that claims to be XP Anti-Spyware but it LIES. It LIES TO US, PRECIOUS. And at this point I've been talking about getting a new computer anyway since bits and pieces are falling off the old one. So. Rather than bitch and moan and spend a whole lot of time fussing with the laptop trying to get it functional again, I'm going to poke Dell for financing, get a new one, and poke and fuss with the laptop at my leisure to have a backup machine should the new computer swallow its own head.

It'll mean I pay my credit card off somewhat more slowly than I wanted to, but with a bit of luck and a tax refund (hopefully) I'll be free of both those debts by the end of the year. Ideally, by the end of the summer. Long term planning for the win, yo.

In other news, I had bizarre dreams about spending the day with Jack Coleman. What the hell, brain.

I have been up for ... four hours. I have achieved two batches of cookie dough, one lunch, one breakfast, one shower, and one stewpot full of what is supposedly chuckwagon stew. And a few RP tags. I win. With the boy's help 'cause he helped with the dishes and the stew a bit. I only have so many hands, after all.

And now, two hours later, I have achieved walkies, eaten lunch, chopped potatoes to finish stew, and done dishes. Who's your daddy.

Not Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who I am still having unnatural lusts over. Despite going, google image searching him, and declaring half the photos it comes up with entirely unsexy.

Game today, which means I'll be scarce. I've gotten the last of the ingredients into the stew so all I need to do is bake the cookies, frost the cookies, and bake the biscuits. And yes, I may be going a little bit overboard on my duties as hostess for game but, dammit, I want frosted sugar cookies. And not the freaky kind from the store either. Real homemade frosted sugar cookies. I went to the grocery store the other day and spent a good $30 on the stuff for it. So nyah.

Despite having a headache and having gone pretty much at full tilt since an hour after I got up, I'm actually really happy/excited. This is way fun. I should maybe rest up a whole lot tomorrow, though.

Deutsch! Now with dragons! Still need KMFDM icon theme ideas. Maybe I'll just cap the "What do you know Deutschland" cover.

( Now with fandom action! )

Russian! Now with shiny new icon!

( Read more... )

... annnd I need to either become coherent sooner or start or Russian sooner because I think that's all I reasonably have time for. Meh.

I wonder how the hell I would translate "Anton Gorodetsky is my anti drug" onto an icon. Or something like that. Or better yet, Сергей Лукьяненко.

( Read more... )

Oh wow. That was way more complicated and annoying than I thought it would be.

The funny thing about listening to the Last of the Mohicans score is that the movie was filmed about what, 20 miles from here? When Bria and Megs were here I'm pretty sure we drove across the bridge that the soldiers come to the town on, in the very beginning. And I can't help but think of that now.

A couple days late but, apparently my mother tried to get downtown to the Mall to see the inauguration. I could have told her that was a bad, bad idea. She got up at 4 in the bloody cold morning and the first two Metro trains were already packed. She managed to get on the third one but due to the crush of people and the various station closings she never made it downtown, so turned around and went home and watched it in the warmth and comfort of the house. Like I would have done in the first place. Hell and no way I'm fighting that many people on the Mall for a spot. Oh no.

That said, I did like Obama's speech. I'm also liking his first few actions. The salary he capped aides at is a reasonable one whether you're an individual or a family, given both cost of living in DC and (I'm less sure on this point) the standard of living expected of an aide and so on. I'm actually kind of curious what he'll be getting up to now.

Lead by example, indeed. The boy did the dinner dishes last night without being told, and I did my breakfast dishes this morning without being glared at by Sam, aka AlsoMe. I'm slowly getting better about all those little habits, which is cool. Keeps a tidier house and makes it less of a pain to clean up the kitchen before I cook. Hopefully it'll also make it less of a pain to clean up for game this weekend, but we'll see about that. Mm. Speaking of which, I need to come up with a good thing to serve for Deadlands. I think it's going to end up being chuckwagon stew. I've already got most of the ingredients. Beef. It's what's for dinner. ... Sam Elliott. Mm, dessert.

Uh. Anyway.

Not much going on. I'm taking a weaving class at work, sitting in on, whichever. The first part of the class we got a warp on the loom, which is to say two students got their warps about finished, I got almost to that point, and our youngest classmate got her warp maybe half to three quarters of the way on, I think on account of rushing through the warp winding, but I could be wrong. But it's fun! And I think I'm going to end up with a beautiful little piece, not sure what it's going to be used for but it'll be pretty.

Russian! Dialogue! ... Hmm, except the dialogue doesn't seem to have questions appearing with it later. So. Exercises!

( Still need a Russian icon. Suggestions for bases welcome. )

And that's probably about it, the way I'm typing, which is to say slow and with much backspace key today. Which means I guess I can squeeze in weights before work today.

... My cat is climbing up the backs of my legs, perching on my thighs and rubbing her face on my ass.

She may think she is helping, but she is not.

Have dragons.

Dream magic was not her forte.

She knew it when Castiel had asked her to tell him her dreams, knew it when she started trying of her own accord to see further, stretch further in her dreams. To see if they were nightmares or true dreams. He didn't need to her the ramblings of a worried woman and he certainly didn't need to pass them along as though they were intelligence reports in a heavenly war.

But after weeks of trying she was at least somewhat closer to lucid dreaming and no closer whatsoever to knowing whether or not she was having visions or simply nightmares. It was frustrating in the extreme.

( Read more... )

Dean's driving again. Dean's driving the car but he's also driving them forwards. And that's exactly what it is these days. Cassie helps sometimes but that doesn't change the fact that Dean's been getting worse, and Sam is worried about him.

At least with Dean driving Sam's free to relax sometimes. When he's not looking up stuff for their next case, flipping through the combined notes of three Winchesters or going over news reports downloaded from their last port of call. He lays back with his head lolling over the back of the seat and his eyes closed, knees cocked up under the dashboard, pretending to sleep. Mostly, he's just pretending. Dean'll stop eventually for the girls' sake and he'll get a real night's sleep in a real bed.

Sam's eyes are closed and his body is still but his mind is racing. As worried as he is, knowing Dean as well as he does, he wonders if that puts Cassie better or worse off. She might not see the signs. But she might read Sam's body language, the way he says things, and get that something bad is happening. Or she might be able to read him just well enough to know and not well enough to know what to do about it.

As if he knows what to do about it. He wishes he could do something to help. Something more, something effective. He wants an instant or at least quick fix, and he knows that's impossible. He still wants it.

Maybe someday things will get better? Maybe someday life will stop crapping on the Winchester family.

"Maybe someday I'll win the lottery," he mutters.

"What?" Dean glances over.

"Nothing." Sam rolls over and 'goes back to sleep.'

Maybe someday they'll be settled somewhere. Five, ten years down the road, maybe they'll actually get to face the rigors of home ownership. Any number of businesses don't need degrees or credentials they couldn't fake. Gunsmithing. Security. They could get all sorts of jobs, the skills they've picked up. Sarah and Cassie haven't tarnished their names yet, they could work legit. Bring in money. Real, clean money, none of this scamming and conning.

Five, ten years down the road maybe the farthest they'll have to drive on a regular basis is the next town over. Sam doesn't even want to think about how many miles they've put on the Impala. They could have real lives. He could have his own car (although he can't imagine Dean driving anything else) and they'd work nine to five, come home at night. Dean and Cassie would be flopped on the couch after dinner with the popcorn. He and Sarah could share a loveseat and a sappy movie or a book, or just sit in comfortable silence doing their own thing.

And maybe, god... Maybe one of them would finally unbend long enough to have kids. The Winchester family curse of interesting times and interesting lives wasn't something he'd wish on anyone, but god it'd be nice to have the chance. Just that one chance. To leave something lasting, to be normal. To be the kind of guy their father must have been, long ago, the man Sam never knew. To be a real boy, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep. To be whole again.

Maybe, five, ten years down the line, Dean could have that.

He'd like that.

Still need a Russian icon.

( New chapter! )

So. Very. Bored.

German! Because I am a good baby courtesan, yes. (Actually I think I need to revisit and remind myself of my goals. Not for any particular reason, it simply seems the right time.)

( German! )

I also definitely do need to do my points system thing for cleaning up. Granted, this place isn't a pigsty yet, or even cluttered. But. It'll be much easier to stay on top of things.

Work was so very dead today. It's probably going to be even more dead tomorrow. I guess at this point the thing to do is to outline a couple of prompts on googledocs and work on them tomorrow at work, or finish the warp on my beadloom. One of the two. Or both. For all I know I'll have time to do both. So. Very. Dead at work.

In celebration of the fact that the Mentalist did a somewhat hilarious witchy episode, I'm listening to and may watch The Craft. That will amuse me for... at least a week, until the next episode. WHICH. Don't anyone forget, and don't anyone let me forget. The next new episode is SUNDAY. Not Tuesday, Sunday. (Kiki, that ought to make you feel better. Or maybe not, you know.)

Right. Time to get dinner started. Since the boy won't be home till late if he knows what's good for him, on account of grocery shopping. He either needs to get some damn chicken or eat whatever vegetarian dish I make for him and STFU. Yes. I love him dearly but meals without a quantity of meat are not the devil's work.

Right. Russian! More practice before I go on to the next section. This time with less dicking around. *eyes previous section sheepishly*

( Read more... )